Flood Stage - Pt. 2

My first clue that there has been more flooding than usual was when I went down to Point Township in Posey County on my annual pilgrimage to Hasting Farm to buy plants for Lola's gardens. The river was about a mile over its bank and all the roads to the greenhouses were impassable. Most people living in Point had been cut off for about a week. They call it the point because it's the point of Indiana where the Wabash river flows into the Ohio. I didn't think much of it because the water is always up in that area in spring. It was just up a bit more than normal. Quite a bit more, actually, but still far from apocalyptic.

Both sides of my family are from that area. It was my father's side that was rescued from the second story of their farmhouse in the big '37 flood. My grandparents on my mom's side actually worked for the grandparents of the owners of Hasting Farm. Old man Hasting was famous for breeding Zebroids, which in his case were half Zebra and half horse, in the hopes of replacing mules as the animal that pulled the plow. Unfortunately for him, that was just before tractors replaced mules for that purpose. He also had a giant barn that was famous throughout the tri-state.

Now the grandson's wife Nancy grows and sells plants. She has six greenhouses and a store with lots of garden supplies and yard ornaments. We go there every spring to buy vegetables, herbs, and maybe a few flowers.

Hasting's was open. I had to drive through a little water to get there, but it was going down fast, about an inch every half hour. I got a lot of herbs, tomatoes and assorted other vegetables like cucumber and squash. I got a couple flowering vines, including a Morning Glory for the little plot by the front door. I got some native plants as well for the part of the yard that will be a native garden. As Lola's gardens have evolved they increasingly attract a lot of butterflies, bees and other insects, which I've come to enjoy as much as the plants themselves. The thing I've figured out is that it's not really one thing or the other. The plants and the birds and the bees and the worms and everything else are one thing and the quality of that one thing is determined by the quantity and variety of the life that inhabits it.

After buying the plants I took a drive towards the point to see how far I could go before I hit the backwater. Pretty far it turned out. This year's flood wasn't near as bad as '37. I spoke with several local people and they all said it wasn't even as bad as '11. Trapped by high water for a week? Yep, whaddaya gonna do? Everyone that lives down there, certainly everyone who's from there, knows there will be floods from time to time. And the big one is always out there somewhere, just over the event horizon.

Awhile back I was talking with farmer Hasting about some solar panels he'd just had installed. I asked him why and he said they'd pay for themselves in 10 years and then he'd have virtually free electricity thereafter. I said, yea, and it's a small blow against global warming as well, eh. He said he didn't believe in global warming because it was hotter down here in Point back in the thirties. I said well, if they called it Point Township warming you might have a point, but left it at that.

So this year isn't the big one, but the big one is coming. Or maybe there will never be a big one, just an ever increasing parade of smaller ones until the rivers reclaim this land they gave up at the end of the last ice age and alligators rule the swamps.

With each of these bouts of extreme weather it becomes more and more clear that if there is a God, it is punishing people for allowing right wing sociopaths to control our governments and economies. The more their ideology of continual growth fueled by environmental destruction continues to rule, the more God will punish humanity by raising the temperature and unleashing violent storms. Of course I don't believe any of that mumbo jumbo, but it should be used to help superstitious folk to better understand where this economy is taking us. I've heard people say that God would never let the climate destroy humanity. Yet those same people were raised, and raise their kids, on the story of Noah's Ark. The connections are there, they just need a little help to see them.